Melky for Sanchy: advantage, Giants

There were general managers in big-league baseball slapping their foreheads Monday, for two different reasons.

Some were doing said slapping and saying, “All it took to get Melky Cabrera was Jonathan Sanchez?!?”

Giants general manager Brian Sabean, who pulled off the deal, might have been thinking those very thoughts. After all, in the wake of Sanchez’s rough 2011, which ended with him on the disabled list, the market for him couldn’t have been entirely robust.

That could be why Sabean, late Monday afternoon, told me the deal took less than a week to put together once it was clear there was something of a match.

Other GMs might have been slapping their heads Monday saying, “All it took to get Jonathan Sanchez was Melky Cabrera?!?”

Both are justified, but the Giants’ deal to acquire Cabrera in exchange for Sanchez and a minor-league pitcher looks like a strong move from the San Francisco side of things.

Cabrera, who turned 27 in August, had a career year in 2011, batting .305 with a .339 on-base percentage, 18 homers, 44 doubles, 87 RBIs and 20 stolen bags while making $1.25 million with the Royals.

Many people who saw a lot of Cabrera with the Yankees, including a couple of my co-workers at 95.7 FM The Game (@957TheGAME), will tell you he’s a stiff who couldn’t handle the heat in New York. They’ll point to his pedestrian numbers in Atlanta, which released him after a pedestrian 2010 (.255/.317 OBP/27 2B /4 HR/42 RBI/7 SB), as evidence that 2011 was an aberration.

Hey, gotta present both sides of the story here. Cabrera’s had only one big year.

But it was last year, and this is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business.

Now for the other side of the deal.

Sanchez, who turns 29 later this month, did not have a career year last year. He went 4-7 with a 4.26 ERA and a 1.44 WHIP, a dramatic downturn from what appeared, at the time, to be a breakthrough 2010: 13-9, 3.07 ERA, 1.23 WHIP.

In fact, 2010 was the first and only of Sanchez’s six seasons (or partial seasons) in the bigs with an ERA under 4.25. Career, he is 38-46 with a 4.26 ERA and a 1.39 WHP. That’s the very definition of pedestrian.

How’s this shake out financially? Cabrera and Sanchez both are eligible for arbitration this winter. Via arbitration, you generally get a raise. Even Sanchez, as average as he was in 2011. Cabrera, on the other hand, was very good.

So let’s say Cabrera doubles his 2011 salary to $2.5 million. Heck, let’s say he triples it, to $3.75 million.

Sanchez made $4.8 million in 2011. He’s gonna cost the Royals — or someone else, if K.C. flips him — more than $5 million.

Giants fans who don’t like this deal might note Sanchez’s prodigious talent, his no-hitter and his stellar 2010. Those less enamored with the mercurial lefty will note the flip-a-coin nature of his starts — Good Sanchy or Bad Sanchy today? — and his tendency to shrink under pressure.

Savor Sanchez’ win over the Padres on the last day of the 2010 regular season all you want, but remember that he lasted only five innings, and when the heat truly was on — most notably, after he guaranteed a sweep of the Padres earlier that season, and his Game 6 meltdown in the NLCS — he came up small.

He never really improved, is the truth of it. He put it all together for a while here and a while there, a longer while in 2010, but by and large he was bad as frequently as he was good.

Here’s the bottom line on this deal: The Giants gained a reliable, motivated (with free agency pending) everyday player who can fill the void in center field and bat first or second in the order — emphasis on reliable everyday player. What they gave up was an unreliable every-fifth-day player who exasperated fans, coaches, teammates and the front office.

Need another reason to like this one? This is the big one: It means Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain are staying put for now.

No way Sabean, who told me less than two weeks ago that he wasn’t ruling out trading a starter because it might be easier to improve the offense that way as opposed to free agency, deals two-fifths of his rotation.

A possible negative to the deal? It seems to signal that Sabean meant it when he downplayed the Giants’ chances of retaining Carlos Beltran.

But if Cody Ross can bounce back and have a year on par with his career, is an outfield of Ross, Cabrera and Nate Schierholtz anything to scoff at?

Is not a top of the order featuring Cabrera, Freddy Sanchez, Pablo Sandoval and Buster Posey a significant upgrade over what the Giants featured while falling just shy of a return to the playoffs?

Granted, there’s a lot of hope factored in right now; hope that Posey and Sanchez are healthy, that Aubrey Huff’s every-other-year trend continues, that Schierholtz and Cabrera continue to get better, that Barry Zito isn’t a mess as the rotation’s No. 5 man, etc.

The Giants got better on Monday, though, and for a first dish o up on the Hot Stove, it feeds the starving baseball soul just fine.